painted miracle: pink-washed plywood

4.26.12 | 7:09pm

photo: lisette scheers

We are completely smitten with the pink-washed walls in this photo from the Milan Furniture Fair. It looks like plywood to us (or we imagine it as that) color-washed with an incredible shade of pink…(though it may also be a surface unevenly painted in close shades of flat pink paint)

It made us start thinking about the possibilities for not simply painting plywood uniformly opaque, but washing it with rich ever-so-slightly-diluted paints in unexpected colors so that the grain shines through and the surface is made interesting by imperfection.

Here pink + plywood becomes magic.

photo: lisette scheers

We found this interesting example of the color-washed plywood idea in the New York Times.

What if you sand the plywood first, to give it a smooth open surface and then mix a wash or stain.

When we stained the cedar on our house, they contractor kept giving us the out-of-the-can finish, which was blotchy, heavy with no degree of saturation. We had him dilute it 6 times until we got it right, which was a thin coat of whitish grey, without texture, and absorbed by the wood to reveal the grain.

For a floor, I could see sanding, staining, maybe even with a house stain? And then you need to decide if you need to seal it, since it is a floor.

Also, there are different grades and types of plywood: birch plywood more refined surface…marine plywood (with waterproof adhesive)…construction grade, usually has a lot of knots replaced by those ovals…and more.

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